¡Hola Familia y buen dia!
It was a super tiring yet super successful week! This week my
head wanted to explode as I tried to get to know something of five new areas.
Our area is huge and we’re riding bikes, walking, riding the bus and an
occasional train ride to our different areas. We live in the center of Cañuelas
and in between each area are farms and land that consist of just about nothing.
It’s been quite an experience though following my companion around trying to
understand everything!
This week I learned how to: sprint after a bus, milk a cow, miss
a train, fix a bike chain super fast, study by candle light and hit the sweet
spot on gigantic spiders with Raid! I’m roughin’ it! It’s a lot different than
Pinamar but Cañuelas is my new home and it’s not too bad! The train is like a
theme park ride! haha We’ve got about
three active families in our area, and about three inactive. So, we’ve
got some work to do!
We have a little house that we live in that fits four right now and I guess a
couple days after I got here the finishing touches of a huge tornado passed
through! Literally, huge trees were up-rooted and a lot of houses are terribly
damaged. It continued to rain for a few days and our lights were out for a
while… hence the candle light. But It’s a nice cozy home and luckily we didn’t get
any flooding! Other than natural disasters… Cañuelas is doing pretty well, and
so am I.
It was good to come to an area with lots of work to do, and we did get right to work. We are really enjoying a little bit of rest today! Plus the
only cure for homesickness calls for a good dosage of hard work… and in the end
turns into a really sore throat/ cold too. L Some days were never
ending but…we did have a bunch of success!
This weekend we spent a lot of time contacting old investigators
and a ton of referencias of members. We walked and walked and walked and walked
and yeah… continue. But, at the end of the day, we both had a feeling to keep
walking, so, we did. At the end of the road we found Nestor, an old man sitting
outside of his one room shack who started to walk towards us. He stopped and
said “Hermana´s, yo pensé que nunca más voy a ver les.” Translation:”Hermana’s,
I thought I’d never see you again.” We started talking to him and found
out that he’s a member and it’s been a long time since he’s seen anyone from
the church. His family rarely visits him and he has Parkinsons disease. He
can’t read because he starts to tremble, his house was destroyed from a lot of
rain and he feels very alone. What a miracle. Staying out on the streets just a
little while longer led us to him. As we started talking to him about the
importance of prayer, his son walked up to him and gave him a huge hug! A
family member! We all started to tear up. Nestor was so debile.. I don’t know what
the word is.. like weakish that he started to cry. His son said “Hola Pap,
how’ve you been? “We were able to talk more with Nestor and assure him that he
is being blessed and that also, his Heavenly Father is waiting to hear from him
daily as well. It was a powerful momento that really affected us all. Our
Heavenly Father is really looking out for each of His children. We are all so blessed!
So Valentines day was just a blast right?! Well, I just fell in
love with the work a little more.. haha. We left in the morning for one of our
far areas called Uribe Larrea to meet up with a member named Miguel who came
with us to our lesson. As we walked up to the house out came Miguel, 4
feet 5 inches tall with crutches. He was born with a limp in his walk. He was
more than ready to come to lessons and help teach with us. As we walked and
talked with him on our way to the investigators house I realized how many great
people there are in this world. It made
me think of the quote that says something like… "In order to change the world,
we have to be different than the world." We visited an old investigator after 4
years of not seeing the missionaries and Miguel shared an amazing testimony
with him. I fell in love with the work all over again. So something I learned
is that we’ve all got a little time to visit the members, to go out with the
missionaries and to recognize our many blessings!
Those are two great stories that I was able to experience this
week but also we were hit with a bunch of different other opportunities. We
found new people to teach and are continuing to teach some great investigators
from before! I’ve learned so much within just a few weeks! I feel like I have been learning at hyper speed
so I can teach with my companion, figure out the new area and at the same time learn with my companion who just finished her training. My new companion and I get along pretty well. Still getting used to the change but it’s all working out! It feels weird being
the older companion, but I’ve experienced just about enough in the past week to
last my whole misión haha.. but, we keep on goin!
The branch (congregation) is super small here! The Church is in a little house and
it’s got a backyard with a little baptismal font pool and a fig tree! I’m
feeling super tropical now. haha The branch is little but it’s got a lot of heart
and I love it.
This weekend we did what’s called a Tormenta Blanca in Monte
Grande… Monte Grande is the name of our Zone. It’s where we all get together and split up in one
area and visit all the inactive members. It was a success and guess who is in
my district ?? Hermana Harmon! (she is the niece of our good friends Ron and Louis Harmon here in Chandler)
Well, that’s my 15 minutes that I had on the computer since it
took a good hour to get the Internet working haha.
I have a bunch of pictures to send that I hope one day I will
figure out how to do here in Cañuelas! Different computers and all…
You’re just missing out on the pictures of dead snakes and figs
and cow milk! Pretty bummed that I can’t send them!
All is good here and I
will talk to you all next week!
Con mucho amor
Hermana
Barrett
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